I will preface this with two statements: 1) It is absolutely within their rights to wear said shirts. 2) The school made a very bad decision, which infringed upon the student's First Amendment rights. That said, there's a good chance these kids are redneck dicks. Why? It's not about 'rights' per se. I think most reasonable folk would grant that its within their rights. The problem is that a lot of behavior that is within my legal rights is nonetheless a thoroughly inconsiderate and disrespectful thing to do. If I show up at an evangelical Christian church wearing some shirt maligning Christianity, I'm being a dick. If I show up at a Fourth of July event wearing a shirt proclaiming the US to be a terrorist state, I'm being a dick. If I walk around on Veteran's Day with a shirt calling Vietnam vets babykillers, I'm being a dick. If I walk into an African American studies class wearing a shirt with a picture of David Duke, I'm being a dick. Even if it's legal, wearing an American flag as a political statement on a day when many of my peers are choosing to celebrate their Mexican heritage is an obnoxious, rude, and inflammatory gesture. While we should castigate the school for its shitty decision, these kids should not be lauded or celebrated. They're assholes. *Raises hand* We are a nation of ideological pluralism and freedom. There should be no obligation, moral or otherwise, for anyone to have to move sheerly for their political attitudes. For that matter, this wasn't about the flag itself. No one found the flag offensive. What they found offensive was a bunch of brats thumbing their nose at their Mexican-American colleagues.
I think kuhjager's take was a very intelligent and relevant one, but what you wrote above is pure nonsense. In California, where I've lived almost my entire life, a Mexican wearing the flag of his country on the 4th of July wouldn't get so much as a raised eyebrow, let alone be asked to invert it, or be beaten up. The hilarious and insane thing is that all of this is going on in California, a US state where wearing a US flag is asking to get beaten up and/or punished, and wearing a Mexican flag is considered normal and accepted. And yet, so many morons are all in favor of illegal immigration, and the extra millions of dollars spent in free legal/medical/school benefits for illegal aliens by the state government. Money that the California government, being tens of millions of dollars in debt already, simply does not have. The illegal immigrants just want a better life. They're doing absolutely nothing wrong. However, it is the job of a government to mediate immigration so that it doesn't over-strain the economic, legal, and political system of the state or country. Arizona is at least trying. California isn't. And people wonder why California is in such horrific debt... Do you live in California, by any chance? I do, and there were cities in the Bay Area that I could peacefully visit with my freaking grandparents as a little kid in the early to mid nineties. Now, as a scary-looking 23 year old who frequently walks around parts of LA County at 3 am, I wouldn't dare go there, as they have been overrun with Mexican-American gang violence. Edit Mods delete this if it is getting a bit too political, but extreme right viewpoints embraced by the mainstream news outlets? Really? Which ones? I've seen countless mainstream news stories calling all Republicans racists, nutjobs, baby killers, and Hitlers in training, but I have yet to see any "extreme right" viewpoint being "embraced" by them.
So that's why crime statistics have trended upwards over the 20 years, right? Wait a minute.....would you look at that. Both the overall and violent crime rates in California are approximately half what they were in the early-to-mid-1990s. In fact, rates have been halved or near-halved for every category of crime.
Are you just screwing around with me, or do you honestly not see the problem with what you posted? California is a giant state, and on the whole, violent crime has decreased in the last 10-15 years. Many cities in the state have a miniscule illegal immigrant population. (Hispanic-Americans who have immigrated legally or been here for generations are completely different) However, in certain individual cities, crime has become much worse. Check out the statistics for Salinas, as an example; <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinas,_California#Crime" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinas,_California#Crime</a>
So you're claiming that illegal immigration and Mexican gangs began in 2008, and that when the Salinas crime rate was stable or decreasing from 1989 until 2008, it was because of the absence of illegal immigrants? You're cherry-picking data. Salinas has a majority-Hispanic population. It has seen a recent rise in homicides. Los Angeles also has a near-majority-Hispanic population. Many, many cities in California have large Hispanic populations. Most of them have lower crime rates today than they did 15 years ago.
I live in the east so I do not realize just how sensitive the issues are with Mexicans, Mexican Americans and Americans in CA, AZ, TX, other than the articles I have been reading. In particular the law in AZ (which I noticed because of an article about the Phoenix Suns) however this is obviously getting very, very bad. It seems the boys did instigate this, they knew they would get negative attention for what they wore. I see nothing wrong with it, I could care less if anyone wore a specific item of clothing other than USA gear on the fourth of July. It really doesn't matter to me, the beauty of our country is that we have the freedom to express ourselves any day of the week. However it does seem like these boys wanted to pick a fight, I mean a bandanna on top of the shirt?? They wanted the attention. Again, I am from the East so I don't know what is happening in there town or there school maybe this is the stand that they decided to take. If everyone just ignored them and went about there business realizing it's just an article of clothing probably would have been the best solution, but we can't do that can we? Regardless I'm happy as hell to live in the country I do.
I'm claiming that there were always Mexican gangs, but there has been more illegal immigration to that city recently, and thus it has gotten worse. There are thousands of other factors that alter a crime rate, (the growing use of contraception and abortions during the period from 1989 to 2000 significantly lowered crime rate, for those who have read "Freakonomics") but in that particular city, it can largely be isolated to the very recent growth of the gangs. Myself and Kuhjager, who both have lived 20+ years in California, are basically saying the same thing about certain Californian cities. Meanwhile, the kid from Mass., MoreCowbell, thinks he knows way more about this subject. Awesome.
I live in New York, where there were places I visited with my grandparents as a little kid which were riddled with gang violence and drug trafficking and where I could now fall asleep on the street without the slightest concern for my personal safety. Things change. Things get better and worse. I'm sorry your state government is laughably incompetent on several levels, but that's not proof of a national trend toward self-destruction. It just means California is all fucked up. What else is new? For the sake of honesty, let's everyone abandon the belief that this board is non-political, shall we? The topics we discuss here are inherently political in nature and to think otherwise is delusion of the highest order. Make all the semantic arguments you want. We're talking politics. Everyone fucking deal with it. My point had nothing to do with media bias. It had to do with what now qualifies as 'news'. Like I said before, if immigration wasn't at the forefront of the national consciousness right now, this would have been a one day story, if that. Because it fits nicely into the extremist (left and right) debate of that topic, we're being presented with a story that is easily co-opted by either side to suit their needs. And here we are, two guys who normally agree on shit, arguing about something so fucking stupid and insignificant and irrelevant to the larger discussion, instead of figuring out why we actually disagree and how to compromise. But that wouldn't make headlines. Ergo, they win and we ultimately lose.
I know this has gotten very serious, I think this is the best way to sum up the argument........http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQU02n358VY
Another freedom of speech circle jerk- "blah blah blah 1ST AMENDMENT!!!" "blah blah blah USE SOME LOGIC!!" People taking the same stances they did on the South Park/Mohammed thread. I'm going to masturbate for awhile until this blows over.
Yes, that is definitely true. I think in general, big cities have become a LOT safer than they were in the 80s. However, you asked me about the rep specifically, and in cities like the one in the article, illegal immigration is fueling crime. Over the whole of California, the impact is most strongly felt economically. (Yes, there are many other government fuck-ups that have led to the debt, too) Well, I think local news journalists have been starving, mangy, rabies-stricken dogs that have latched on to any story they could for the last 20 years or so. Relevant or irrelevant. (I used to read the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News when they were giving us free trials...Good God) Nothing has really changed in that regard. However, I have never seen the ones covering politics, or any national journalist, "embracing an extreme left/right wing position". Not even Fox News, which is Republican-leaning, but has never really gay-bashed, appealed to the Bible in solving policy questions, or anything else associated with extreme right-wingers in the country. Meanwhile, I have seen insane left wing zealotry on the other news channels many, many times. Probably a reason why I don't watch TV anymore. As for what they want the people to think, I read many articles off of Yahoo's front page, and their bias is astounding.
Hey look, Roger "The Ventriloquist Dummy" Ebert would like to chime in again on something that has nothing to do with movie reviews- <a class="postlink" href="http://gawker.com/5534596/tea-party-turns-on-roger-ebert-mocks-his-cancer-updated" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://gawker.com/5534596/tea-party-tur ... er-updated</a> "@ebertchicago Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July" Good job "jawboning" there Roger.
You know, I suppose I was the one who broke the civility barrier here first. And I have been a bit uppity. My bad on that. Yes, some cities display higher crime in the wave of aggregate falls. This might be due to the increased presence of Mexican gangs. Or it might be a statistical aberration, noise in the data. Or, the Mexicans gangs might be leaving one town and moving to another, which means its more of a shifting of the problem than an increase. There's a plethora of possible explanations. The crime statistics of one city with a population of 150,000 is too small of a sample to tell. But yes, you know more about which is more likely than I do, given your proximity. I originally wrote a longer response here, but realized you're probably right. You realize this is extremely definitionally dependent, right?
Thank you for supporting the theory that Americans talk to hear themselves talk, whether or not they actually have anything to say. I wish I could interject pointless, flippant remarks and leave it at that. Maybe "embrace" wasn't the right word. They facilitate those positions, and that is undeniable. I hate nostalgia, but let's face it: the spirit of Cronkite is dead. Gone are the days when news organizations presented raw facts and forced you to make up your own mind. The reporting on this topic is being done by pundits with audiences who possess biases that demand confirmation. The left wants to hear that this was racial insensitivity by racist whites, pure and simple, and Maddow will deliver. The right wants to hear that this was an infringement of constitutional rights by an America-hating dictator, and Hannity will deliver. The truth is whatever you want it to be, and that kind of accommodation leads everyone to forget the most important fact: these people are all a bunch of fucking jerks and should never have been given a national stage in the first place.
All of those are certainly possible, but from what I've seen, not the case for a city like Salinas. I'm curious what kuhjager thinks. In wider terms, it's interesting that this is the same problem Iceland has with Poles and other low-income immigrants, or Germany with Turks. That's why immigration, from any country, needs to be regulated. That being said, if I were a Mexican living in that country, I would absolutely try to cross the border illegally for a better life. In fact, I am friends with a few illegals, and am individually happy for each of them. But the law exists for a reason, and it's there to cater to its citizens, not the citizens of all countries. (Although there are certainly Democrats who believe the latter) Of course. That's why one of my high school history teachers called Time Magazine "a very old-school, conservative magazine". This is the same liberal yuppy who went on a rant against the Vietnamese when he had jury duty and many "fellow citizens" were Asian dudes who couldn't speak a word of English. Vietnamese immigrate here legally, however, so I personally had no problem with that. However, he did. So I also think there's a major difference between what someone claims to believe or even says and their physical reaction when presented with it.
I don't see it as "a bunch of brats thumbing their nose at their Mexican-American colleagues." It's an American flag. It represents the country that they reside in, and the government that funds that school in the first place. It does not represent any kind of anti-Mexican sentiment. If a student wore a Santa Claus shirt on one of the days of Hanukkah, would he have to take it off? Where do you draw the line with this shit? The school threatened to PUNISH these kids, even though they had done nothing wrong. That's the part that pisses me off the most. The only people who should be punished are those who choose to harass these students. Also, the school most likely has a flagpole.. with an American flag. Are they gonna take that down every Cinco de Mayo from now on?
You can, and do it quite often on this board. This is well known. But no matter how many times you post in a single thread, arguing the same point over and over again in different wording doesn't make you right.
So you think they wore it on May 5 by coincidence? That them choosing to do was unrelated to the other students' display of pride in their Mexican heritage? It takes an inordinate amount of benefit of the doubt to say that it wasn't deliberately antagonistic to the Mexican-American students at the school. I don't believe that any student involved should have been asked to remove the shirt, so the Santa Claus example is irrelevant.
You're right. I'm right because I'm right, not because I keep repeating how right I am. Also, dog farts.